Renting an apartment in Israel from America

Racheli

Mon, Aug 10 2015, 10:01 pm

How do you find an apartment to rent in Israel from America? There don't seem to be any official real estate sites like there are in America to rent or buy in America.

DrMom

Tue, Aug 11 2015, 12:14 am

There are real estate agents who set up these sort of rental agreements, bit they are mostly for upscale rentals in Yerushalayim, Tel-Aviv, Herzliya Pituach, etc.

If that's not what you are looking for, you may want to contact the community you'll be joining to see if someone can help set you up. Or you can set something up if you come on a pilot trip.

luppamom

Tue, Aug 11 2015, 4:00 am

There is this site called yad2. http://www.yad2.co.il/Nadlan/rent.php
It's in Hebrew and it might not work so well for Charedi areas since they are less likely to list their apartment on the internet.

Chana4

Tue, Aug 11 2015, 4:14 am

if you PM me, I can send you a weekly run of an email group that goes out in Ramat Eshkol with apartments for rent, you cant join unless you live in the neighborhood and I can forward the email to you, but I can send you specifics if you want.

fluffernutter

Tue, Aug 11 2015, 4:22 am

What I did was I signed up for Yissa Bracha - its 200 shekel for 2 months - you tell them how big and what neighborhood/s you are looking for, and they send you a list of apartments every day. The trick is, finding someone in E"Y to help you by calling, going to look at it, taking pictures and dealing with them until you get there. I don't think I would have been able to do it without someone doing that for me. Hatzlocha!!!

ahuva06

Tue, Aug 11 2015, 4:55 am

I also signed up on Yissa Bracha but IMHO if an apartment made it onto their listing there is already something wrong with it because apartments here get snatched up before you can blink - if they need to be listed somewhere there is a reason why people aren't taking it... The way to find a really good apartment is by word of mouth. We just moved out of our Yissa Bracha apartment thank God!! We managed to find a better one once we were actually in the country...
Good luck!

Smile1234

Tue, Aug 11 2015, 5:31 am

Why don't you start out by telling us what area you are looking in?

I joined the Ramat Eshkol list and I'm not part of the neighborhood - you can join too, you just can't post for free or something like that. To post or subscribe to this group, send email to ramateshkolnshei@gmail.com.

fluffernutter

Tue, Aug 11 2015, 8:20 am

Our first apt was not from YB but was found shortly after and because of the listing we saw on YB. (We had it for a few months but never ended up living in it - long story!) The one we are in now is on YB and is just a small machsan. Nothing really wrong with it and we've been here for a few months already. I think the baal dira just didn't want to deal with hanging up signs. They seem to have $. If you don't have a lot of ppl in E"Y who can look around for you and help, I think YB is good hishtadlus. If you wanna live in Ramat Eshkol, the nishei list is really good.

Racheli

Wed, Aug 12 2015, 9:38 am

It seems like the Yad2 website has very few apartments and what it does have are mostly apartments that are in the process of being built rather than actual existing apartments. Where I live now, there are websites that list, say, all houses for sale in a particular town or towns within one state with pictures. Isn't there anything like that?

water_bear88

Wed, Aug 12 2015, 9:57 am

Racheli wrote:

Were you looking at the rentals or sales? Yad2 has both. You won't find much on there that's in haredi neighborhoods, in any case.

DrMom

Wed, Aug 12 2015, 10:59 am

Okay. What city/area? Yerushalayim? The Mercaz? Beer Sheva? Efrat? Eilat? Metulla?

water_bear88

Wed, Aug 12 2015, 11:03 am

Racheli wrote:

I'm not looking for haredi neighborhoods.

Sorry, I saw the posts about Ramat Eshkol and mistakenly thought you were looking there.

For most non-haredi neighborhoods, Yad2 is still a good place to look. Alternatively, you can try individual realtors.